


if you want me to write a poem (about you)

by bitnotgood, thistidalwave



Series: poem 'verse [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitnotgood/pseuds/bitnotgood, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>uni au. Harry falls asleep on Louis at a party. It may or may not be destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you want me to write a poem (about you)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was first suggested because of [this poem](http://25.media.tumblr.com/74b36d1c02a2a15fbd82d2d61af009f5/tumblr_mjmxtyYM7n1s2qnmyo1_1280.jpg) that Calley bitnotgood found on tumblr (where the title is also from) and just kind of snowballed from there into this angsty thing. it's kind of the product of Calley and I texting pain at each other, which is probs our #1 hobby, so that's why Calley's listed as a coauthor even though Jenny did all the writing.
> 
> we'd like to thank anyone and everyone who cheered us on, and especially croissantkatie for the beta/britpick.
> 
> there are also mixes that go with this fic: [side a](http://8tracks.com/thistidalwave/if-you-want-me-to-write-a-poem-about-you-side-a) (louis) and [side b](http://8tracks.com/thistidalwave/if-you-want-me-to-write-a-poem-about-you-side-b) (harry), as well as a [tumblr tag](http://incandescentwings.tumblr.com/tagged/poem%20au).
> 
> harry, zayn, and niall are all cisgirls. :)

_before_

 

The first time Louis meets Harry, they’re at a party. She’s dressed to kill in a black sparkly mini dress and red fuck me heels, but her dark curly hair is everywhere and her smoky eye makeup is smeared a little more than Louis suspects it started out. She collapses next to Louis on the sofa, drink in hand, and flutters her eyelashes up at him.

“Hey there,” she says, voice huskier than Louis was expecting, and then she puts her head on Louis’ shoulder and sighs. Louis freezes, trying to decide what to do or say or what, and then the bottle in Harry’s hand starts to tip out of it just slow enough for Louis to catch it before it actually spills everywhere.

Louis blinks and realises she’s fallen asleep. He supposes he doesn’t blame her--it’s nearing half three in the morning, and he’d sat down in the first place because he was tired.

He sits there for fifteen minutes with this strange girl breathing softly onto his neck and the taste of the alcopop he’d finished drinking for her on his tongue. He doesn’t mind, really; he hadn’t been planning on going anywhere in any case. She eventually wakes up, blinking slowly up at him for a moment before her lips curl up into a tiny smile. 

Louis thinks it’s possible he’s been thoroughly fucked while he wasn’t paying attention.

“Sorry,” Harry says, sitting up. “How long’ve I been out?”

“Not long,” Louis says.

“Mmm,” she hums. The party is dying down around them despite the loud bass of the house music that’s still blaring out of the shitty sound system, but Louis doesn’t think he’ll ever notice anything that isn’t the colour of this girl’s eyes again. They’re the kind of pale green that makes Louis think of the undersides of leaves, rimmed with dark that reminds him of the bottom of the ocean, and he wants to go home and write pages upon pages of poetry about the way they contrast with the pink of her lips. “I’m Harry,” she adds. “I’ll just call you Pillow, yeah?”

Louis laughs a little. “You can if you want,” he says, “but my actual name is Louis.”

“Like a king,” Harry says. “S’nice to meet you.”

“Nice to be acquainted with your curls,” Louis says. “I like them; we struck up quite the kinship whilst you were sleeping.”

Harry giggles. “Hm,” she says, picking up one of her curls and considering it. “What do you know, they seem to like you as well.”

“Good,” Louis says. He’s stuck on what to say next, still a bit drunk and a lot tired and not in any way fit to be conversing with a pretty girl. Harry pulls her phone out of where she’d been keeping it in her bra and winces when she presses the unlock button.

“I’ve got to go, my friend’s been texting me,” Harry says, standing. She wobbles a little on her heels, and Louis reaches out to steady her. “Bye, Louis. See you around.”

“Bye, Harry’s curls,” Louis says, and he can hear her laughing even when he can’t see her anymore.

-

Louis is staring blankly ahead of him when Zayn sits down next to him a few minutes later and asks, “Who was that earlier?”

Louis blinks, shrugs at her, then remembers how to use his tongue long enough to say, “Harry,” before he forgets again.

-

It could easily have been longer before Louis saw Harry again, if ever, but-- something about her sticks in his mind. She hovers at the edge of everything he does, the softness of her hair a ghost brushing against his skin late at night, the colour of her eyes refusing to be described in a way he likes.

It’s becoming a problem, albeit one Louis kind of likes. (He thinks he’d like to see Harry again more.)

When Niall flops down onto his bed a week and a half later with a packet of crisps and announces she’s going to a party Saturday night, ostensibly just as her usual FYI, Louis asks, “Can I come with?”

Niall looks surprised, narrows her eyes at him a bit. “Why? I thought you had that important essay?”

Louis shrugs. “Usual suspects going to be there?”

“Is this about that girl?” Niall asks, laughing when Louis scowls at her, mentally cursing Zayn for never keeping her mouth shut. “Can’t promise you she’ll be there.”

“Whatever,” Louis says. “I like parties.”

“Yeah,” Niall says, and Louis rolls his eyes at the smirk on her lips. “I know you do.”

-

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
Heading to a party tonight with @nialler1993 should be siiick !!  
4:39 PM - 22 Oct 12

-

So that’s how Louis meets Harry again--because this time when he walks into the party he’s immediately scanning faces, and when he finally spots her, it’s almost surreal, because it seems like she spotted him first.

“My own personal pillow!” she says, waving him over. “Told you he’s real, Liam.”

Her smile when she playfully jabs an elbow into the guy standing next to her could be its own star, tiny and beautiful.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” Liam says. He holds out a hand to Louis. “I’m Liam.”

Shaking hands is weirdly formal, not something Louis was expecting. Louis does it anyway. He kind of likes it from this tall broad shouldered dude. “Louis.”

“Heard you took good care of my girl the other weekend,” Liam continues, and Harry rolls her eyes loudly. How she makes an eye roll loud, Louis has no idea. Idiosyncrasy. Louis likes that word.

“I’m not _your girl_ , Liam,” Harry says. “Don’t go giving people the wrong idea.” She winks at Louis, and the heartbeat Louis hadn’t even realized he’d skipped at Liam’s words catches up, beating triple time.

It’s weird. Louis didn’t know he opened his eyes this morning in a world where university students shook hands and actually winked at each other.

“Can I get you another drink?” he asks, nodding toward the cup in her hand.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, you can.”

Louis returns her smile. This, at least, is something he understands.

-

Other things Louis understands include: the basics of English grammar, the simple enjoyment of whatever stupid things you want, the proper way to have a tea party, the rules of football, and--

And this, the easy act of grabbing a pretty girl’s hand and falling onto a bed with her, breathless with laughter and alcohol, the simple trick of pressing his fingers in just such a way that she makes the most beautiful noises, of letting her own fingers press back until all he knows is skin and heat and feeling.

He understands that. Sometimes, like now, there are parts he doesn’t understand, like why this girl wants him, or what he’s meant to do when it’s over, but the basics--Louis has always been good at basics.

-

Louis wakes to incessant prodding at his shoulder and opens his eyes to see Harry’s face hovering above his, hair falling down around her like a fucking halo or something. Maybe someday, he hopes desperately, he’ll get used to how pretty she is. Zayn is gorgeous and he doesn’t feel vaguely sick from lack of breath every time he looks at her. (This is probably due to how he’s known Zayn since they were tiny people, but that’s irrelevant.)

“G’morning, sleepy,” she says.

“Hi,” Louis says, pushing himself up on his elbows. Harry sits back on her heels—she’s already dressed in a simple jeans and a t-shirt combo, different from the dresses Louis has seen in her in before.

“It’s nearly midday,” Harry says.

Louis cringes a bit. “Sorry. I should probably go, yeah?” It comes out as a question, but he doesn’t mean it. She’d told him to stay last night, but this is probably overstepping—it was just sex. It’s not like they’re going to fall in love and be together forever now. He swings his legs out of the bed and looks around for his clothes instead of looking at Harry.

“You don’t—I mean, you can if you want, but I thought we could go out for lunch?”

Louis nearly gives himself whiplash he looks up from where he was grabbing his pants so fast. “Like—“

“I mean, you seem like a great guy from what I can remember us talking about last night? I don’t want things to be weird.”

Louis blinks, then nods. “All right.”

“Great,” Harry says. “I’ll go, you get dressed—would you rather we stop by wherever yours is to get fresh clothes, or do you want to borrow something of Liam’s? He won’t mind.”

“You have a car?” Louis asks.

“Yeah.”

“Stop by mine, then?” he decides. “Where is Liam, by the way?”

Harry shrugs. “Probably at some girl’s.” 

“Ah,” Louis says. He feels better for the news—despite Harry’s protests that she doesn’t belong to him, Liam still seemed pretty protective of her, and he doesn’t really fancy running into that immediately after having woken up the morning after what was some rather enthusiastic sex.

“See you in a minute,” Harry says, smiling at him before closing the bedroom door behind her.

-

“So,” Harry says.

“So,” Louis repeats, watching a drop of condensation rolls its way down the side of his glass of water.

“What do you study?”

“English,” Louis says, practiced from the many times he’s had this standard conversation, “with a focus on writing and poetry. You?”

“Oooh, you’re a poet,” Harry says. She grins around the straw of her fizzy drink, then sits up to say, “I’m on track to become a lawyer.”

Louis feels like he should be surprised, but something about Harry makes _lawyer_ sound more like a foregone conclusion. “That suits you,” he says.

“Does it?” Harry asks mildly. Louis shrugs. Maybe he would have said that about anything she said she was studying. He’s not really sure.

Louis stabs his fork into his salad. Casual as the setting of this small café and the comfortable slant of Harry’s shoulders is, he’s thinking this was maybe a mistake. Maybe he should have just insisted on leaving, and then he’d have Harry and their drunken sexcapade out of his system and he could just move on.

“You should write a poem about me,” Harry says.

Louis freezes. “What?”

“I mean, I just think that’d be cool,” she amends, “having a poem written about me.”

“Sure,” Louis says, thinking of the phrases he has scrawled down at home, the ones that correspond to the shapes and curves of the Harry he’d first met. “Maybe I will.”

-

“Friends, yeah?” Harry says when they’re standing up to leave.

Louis, who had been fully expecting for that to be it despite Harry’s best intentions, is surprised. “Well—“

“Come on, give me your mobile,” Harry says, and Louis finds himself handing it over without another word. He has a feeling it’s not the last time Harry will have a strange hold over him.

-

Niall catcalls when he walks into the living room of their shared flat, because of course she does.

“How was it?” she asks, pausing her video game to turn and look at him.

“None of your business,” Louis says.

“Are you going to do it again?”

“We’re going to be friends,” Louis says.

Niall laughs.

-

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
Absolutely drowning in work ! :(  
2:07 PM - 8 Nov 12

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
@Louis_Tomlinson Study with me? For the focus factor and the moral support .x  
2:21 PM - 8 Nov 12

-

Louis opens the door of the flat to Harry’s smiling face.

“Hi! Happy early birthday!” 

“Hey!” Louis says, and then he’s got a Harry wrapped around his torso, practically squeezing the life out of him. He hugs back and breathes in the citrus scent of her hair. 

“I didn’t know you were coming,” he says when she’s let go and the door is shut behind her. “You want something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” Harry says. “And Niall invited me.”

“Did she,” Louis says. He can’t say he’s particularly surprised; inviting the girl she thinks Louis fancies to his birthday slash holiday party is a very Niall thing to do. He looks around, hoping to catch her eye so he can glare at her, but he spots her making out with Zayn in a corner. That’s also pretty typical.

Louis finds Harry a glass in a kitchen cupboard and hands her it and a bottle. Harry pours herself a glass of cheap wine and swishes it around. “So,” she says, “I didn’t get you a present.”

Louis shrugs. “That’s all right. We’re not at the stage of friendship where gifts are necessary, are we?”

“Mmm,” Harry acquiesces around a sip of wine. Louis watches her as she scans the room, so he’s still looking when her face lights up at something.

She takes a step toward Louis and grabs his wrist, tugging him over to the doorway to the kitchen. Louis doesn’t even think to resist until the last second, when he abruptly remembers that Niall had stuck mistletoe up around the flat.

“Mistletoe,” Harry says, gesturing upward and confirming Louis’ suspicions that the kitchen doorway was one spot to fall victim to Niall’s fancies, and then Harry’s leaning down toward him and planting a kiss against his lips, hard and chaste. It’s exactly the kind of kiss you give your friends when kissing is a thing you do with your friends. (Kissing has never really been a thing Louis has done with his friends.)

“There,” Harry says. “That’s a good present, yeah?”

“Yes, yeah,” Louis says. His tongue feels like it’s in knots. “Thanks.”

Harry grins, blindingly bright. “I think I hear people playing FIFA,” she says. “You wanna?” She jerks her head toward the living room. 

“I’ll kick your arse, fair warning,” Louis says. 

“You’re on.”

-

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
Seeing if we can steal some pudding early... shhh ! pic.twitter.com/xxxxx  
1:32 PM - 25 Dec 12

 **zaynmalik** @zaynmalik  
@Louis_Tomlinson You’re a terrible influence !! I’ll be over in a bit :D x  
1:58 PM - 25 Dec 12

 **Niall Horan** @nialler1993  
@Louis_Tomlinson send me some or ill tell ur mum!  
2:03 PM - 25 Dec 12

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
@Louis_Tomlinson Cuties .xx  
4:40 PM - 25 Dec 12

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Rapping at the dinner table with the family.. standard Christmas .xx  
5:12 PM - 25 Dec 12

 **Liam Payne** @liam_payne  
@Harry_Styles 99 problems but your face aint oneeee haha  
5:18 PM - 25 Dec 12

-

“Oh, whoa,” Zayn says. Louis looks up from the telly and frowns at her. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here, sorry.”

“Why wouldn’t I be here?” Louis asks, going back to staring at the _Made in Chelsea_ rerun. “I live here.”

“Thought you’d be out with Harry,” Zayn says, shrugging as she sits down next to him. “You usually are.”

“She has a date tonight,” Louis says. 

“Oh,” Zayn says. Louis rips a loose thread off the sleeve of his jumper and throws it on the floor.

“You okay?” Zayn asks after a minute. 

Louis turns to look at her quizzically. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just thought... never mind. Who’s Harry on a date with?”

“Some guy named Jake with these weird squinty bug eyes,” Louis says. “She could do so much better.”

“Has she been out with him before?” 

“Yeah, and so there’s probably something redeemable about him, I know what you’re going to say,” Louis grumbles.

Zayn smirks. “As long as you know. It’s Liam’s job to be all protective over Harry, anyway. Want to order Chinese?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Extra sweet and sour sauce?” Zayn asks.

Louis smiles wanly. “You know me so well.”

-

Harry breaks it off with Jake sometime within the next two weeks, and Louis doesn’t hear about it until Niall mentions that Harry’s a single lady who don’t need no man whilst on the phone to her.

“Isn’t she dating Jake?” Louis asks. 

Niall makes a face at him. “No, that was barely ever anything. Shut up, I’m on the phone.”

Louis feels oddly like a weight has been lifted off his back.

-

Louis is lying on Harry’s bed, flipping through a book he’s supposed to be reading for class but isn’t in favour of watching Harry where she’s perched on her desk chair, painting her nails with a layer of glitter over the red she’s already finished. Her bottom lip is tucked between her teeth, and she frowns slightly whenever she makes a mistake. It’s kind of adorable.

“Why do you do that, anyway?” Louis asks when she’s put the cap on the bottle of varnish and is blowing on her nails.

Harry looks up. “Do what?”

Louis gestures at her. “Paint your nails. I don’t get the appeal.”

“Don’t you think it looks nice?” Harry asks, looking at him quizzically. 

“Of course,” Louis says quickly. “It looks lovely.”

Harry smiles at him. “It’s kind of therapeutic, really.” She pauses, then adds, “Wanna try?”

Louis almost drops his book. “Uh, I don’t think I’d be very good at it,” he says.

“I was joking,” Harry says, regarding him thoughtfully, “but you didn’t say no like it was the worst thing and go on about how you’re too manly. I could do it for you? Just some glitter?” She waves the little bottle at him, and really, Louis was a goner as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

They end up sitting in the bathroom, Louis on the closed toilet seat and Harry on the edge of the bathtub, while Harry carefully cleans Louis’ fingers and files his nails for him. It’s kind of nice, Louis thinks, and then Harry starts applying silver glitter with careful strokes, and that’s not so bad either. She has to lean in close to make sure she doesn’t make a mistake, and she holds Louis’ hands so gently that it’s almost ticklish. 

“There you go,” Harry says when she’s done, looking up at Louis. “Glittery nails.”

“Yeah,” Louis says, tilting his hands back and forth to watch his nails catch the light. It reminds him of watching Harry just to see her sparkle when he least expects it. “Thanks,” he says, finding that he really means it. He probably wouldn’t paint his nails himself, but if Harry ever wanted to again…

“You’re welcome,” Harry says, and she’s almost too bright for Louis to look at.

-

There are dark purple stains on Harry’s fingers from the berries she’s been eating and the sun is bright yellow and hot in her hair. Louis doesn’t think he’s ever been quite this brand of happy.

“The air here smells amazing,” Harry says, and Louis has to hold back a laugh. The farmer’s market smells like a lot of people and food slowly warming up in the sun, but if Harry thinks it’s amazing, then sure it is. 

“Sure, babe,” he says, and she punches him lightly in the arm. 

“Shut up, it’s about atmosphere,” she says, and then, “Where do you think you’ll be in five years?”

“Uh,” Louis says, caught off guard. 

Harry laughs. “I don’t mean, like, serious business. I mean, in five years I want to have dyed my hair some crazy colour just because I could, and I want to have seen as many countries and taken as many pictures of flowers as I can fit in, and I want to be squishing my toes in sand somewhere, and I want to smile a lot.” She looks at Louis expectantly.

“I want a cat,” Louis says because it’s the first thing to pop into his head. “I want to play football somehow, and I want to have one of those expensive as shit fountain pens. And I want to smile.”

“Is that it?” Harry asks. 

Louis shrugs, then says, “I want to actually see as many sunsets and sunrises as I can.”

“I like that,” Harry says.

“I like you,” Louis counters. They’re words that could have a weighty meaning, but here, in the middle of a crowd of people, hands interlinked and the sun beating down on them, they’re light and teasing.

Harry grins. “Come on, I want to check out the crafts section and then maybe get more berries.”

“You’re the boss,” Louis says, letting himself be dragged along.

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair .x  
10:34 PM - 7 Apr 13

-

“Let’s go skinny dipping,” Harry says, and Louis swears Niall is on her feet and whipping off her vest before Harry’s even finished the sentence. They’re in a very secluded section of the lake that’s surrounded by trees and it’s starting to get dark, but hell, Louis didn’t know Niall was that into the idea of swimming naked.

“Um,” Liam says. Zayn rolls her eyes. Louis raises his eyebrows at Harry. 

“You know you want to, all of you, so let’s go,” Niall commands, and she’s running into the lake and throwing herself under the water before anyone can even blink. 

“She got undressed really fast,” Harry says in awe. 

“She does that,” Zayn says. “I’ve decided it’s Irish magic.”

“I love it,” Harry says reverently, staring after Niall, and Zayn takes off her shirt for the sole purpose of using it to hit Harry.

“Back off my girl,” she says, and Harry laughs. 

“You gonna come in the water?”

Zayn purses her lips primly. “Now I have to so I can keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Zayn,” Louis says, standing so he can shuck off his shorts and shoes. “I can handle this one.” He grabs Harry and hauls her in so he can tickle her sides.

“I bet you can,” Zayn says over Harry’s shrieks. “But I’ll come. You, too, Liam.”

“But--”

“Come on, Payne, it’s totally fine. None of us here are attracted to your dick. Well, Harry might be, but she’s probably seen it enough.”

“Eugh, too much in the course of my short life,” Harry says, wrinkling her nose.

Liam blushes bright pink, and Louis laughs at him. 

“Hey! Why the fuck am I out here by myself!” Niall yells.

They all roll their eyes, and Harry shouts that they’re coming, and eventually they all do end up in the water. (They basically have to hold Liam down and strip him and throw him in the water to make it happen, but it does happen all the same.) 

They splash water in each other’s faces and scream what is probably too loudly at each other. Zayn sticks to where she can still touch the bottom, and Liam hangs back with her, while Niall challenges Louis to swimming out as far as they can, which ends up being until Harry starts yelling at them to get their arses back to shore before they drown.

The night ends with them piled practically on top of each other on the beach in various states of undress, and Louis thinks that they’ve set a high bar for the rest of the summer to live up to. 

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Sick of boys.. @Louis_Tomlinson just marry me? .x  
8:01 PM - 25 May 13

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
@Harry_Styles Sure, babe, but I’m afraid I have some bad news for you pertaining to the first part of your tweet...  
8:08 PM - 25 May 13

-

Louis hadn’t known it was so hard to find specialty flowers or whatever, but after an entire afternoon of travelling from flower shop to flower shop looking for one specific flower that Harry wanted to see in person and take a picture of, he’s well enlightened. 

He’d spent the requisite amount of time complaining at Harry, but he definitely doesn’t mind spending time with his best friend, watching her click the heels of her flats together impatiently when they stand in queues and peer over her sunglasses at him on the bus. Besides, she’d let him drag her into various thrift shops and gamely thrown every brightly coloured piece of clothing she found at him. (Not that he’d specifically requested she find brightly coloured things, that was a conclusion she’d come to by herself.)

They hadn’t ended up finding the flower, but Harry hadn’t really seemed that bothered, cheerfully suggesting they get McDonald’s for dinner and then head out to the lake.

“I took a picture of the sunrise that day at the beginning of the summer when we all camped out here,” Harry says in the car, McDonald’s takeaway precariously perched in her lap. “So now I want to take a picture of the sunset in the same place at the end of the summer. It’s ridiculous, but--”

“No, it’s cute,” Louis says, glancing over at her. “It’s a good idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They spread out a blanket on the sand to sit on. Harry crosses her legs in front of herself primly, which Louis thinks is hilarious. It doesn’t really go with anything else about Harry, especially the way she’s devouring a packet of chips and licking salt off her fingers.

“We have to wait for the light to be right,” Harry says, and Louis nods, laying back on the blanket. From this angle, with the sky slowly getting darker above her and the light of the sun setting behind her, Harry takes on that stupid angelic look that she gets sometimes. (If Louis is honest with himself, she looks like an angel to him all the time.)

Louis watches as Harry takes picture after picture, frowning at her camera and adjusting the settings. She gets this adorable grumpy furrow between her eyebrows, and Louis wants nothing more to smooth it away, possibly with a gentle press of his lips.

Probably not something he should be thinking about his best friend. He presses his eyes shut for a moment, and when he opens them again Harry’s camera is stowed away in its case again and she’s fumbling with something else in her hands. She manages to get the lighter to work and lights a cigarette, sticking it carefully between her lips and inhaling before taking it away, carelessly dangling it between her fingers. Louis has time to think _since when does she light up?_ before she’s exhaling, smoke drifting softly out of her mouth and blending with the grey-blue colour of the dusk, and oh.

Oh, fuck.

He’s in love with her. He loves her and her stupid curls and the way her fingers click the shutter of her camera and hold a cigarette and how she can pull off a mini dress but still look beautiful just wearing joggers and her laugh and.

“Since when do you smoke?” Louis asks, instead of saying what he wants to, which is _why do you have to do things that make me fall in love with you?_

Harry turns to look at him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Only for the big moments,” she says. “This feels like one.”

“Oh,” Louis says weakly, and he doesn’t ask why. He’s fairly sure he doesn’t want to know the answer. 

It wouldn’t be what he wants it to be.

-

Aug 30, 04.22 Louis  
Think I went and fell in love

Aug 30, 08.39 Niall  
duh you eegit

Aug 30, 11.17 Zayn  
Oh, babe :( We’ll see you in a couple days, yeah ? x

-

Louis is lying in bed with his duvet over his face when he hears the tell-tale creak of door of the flat opening, and then the sound of Niall and Zayn arguing about something and suitcases dragging along the tile floor. He grabs his other pillow and puts it over his face for good measure. He’s got this plan where he never leaves the bed again all worked out, and the arrival of Niall and Zayn, back from their romantic summer getaway, means that he’s about to be thoroughly disillusioned. 

“Louis?” Zayn calls out, and Louis makes a grunting noise that Zayn probably couldn’t even hear.

“He’s in here,” Niall says, sounding like she’s in the doorway, and then she’s jumping on the bed. “Wakey wakey!”

“I’m awake,” Louis mumbles into the layers of fabric on his face, and then Niall is pulling them off him and frowning down at him. 

“Have you been moping all this time?”

Louis doesn’t feel like that question particularly deserves an answer.

“You all right?” Zayn asks, coming into the room and settling herself on the bed next to him. Niall rearranges herself so she’s lying next to him on the other side. It’s really quite squishy, but Louis can’t say he minds.

“I’m in love with Harry,” Louis says. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and the words seem to almost be tangible in the air.

“She’s very lovable,” Niall says. 

“Okay, I’m seriously worried that Niall and Harry have some sort of thing going on,” Zayn says. “You keep, like, talking on the phone all the time and implying you’d do each other.”

“It’s called being friends, Zayn,” Niall says mildly.

“Can we concentrate on the breakdown at hand?” Louis asks. 

“Sorry,” Niall and Zayn chorus. “How’d you realise, anyway?” Niall adds. “Thought you’d go forever all oblivious.”

“She was just... being Harry,” Louis says, because really that’s what it comes down to.

“Makes sense,” Zayn says. “I feel like that about Niall.”

“Awwww,” Niall coos.

“Oh my god,” Louis says. “If you’re going to be a sappy couple, get out of my bed.”

“Sorry,” Zayn says. “You should tell Harry, you know.”

Louis turns to glare at her. “It’s not that easy.”

Niall makes a noise that Louis chooses to interpret as agreement. “Maybe see how things progress,” she says. Zayn makes a confused face, and Louis shrugs. “Right now, though, we cuddle. And later we can get ice cream and watch One Tree Hill.”

“I like the sound of that,” Louis says.

-

They’re at a party--one not unlike the party Louis had met Harry at, a fact he was not thrilled to notice and subsequently tried to forget by consuming all the alcohol within his reach. It’s been almost a month since he realised that he’s in love with Harry, and he hasn’t yet gotten severely drunk. He intends to fix this.

He makes good on his intention, ending up moping around and telling random people about their own mortality and the futility of romantic relationships (bonus points if he finds a couple making out to start rambling at.) He’s usually a happy, clingy drunk, but apparently not tonight. Niall and Zayn and Liam give him worried looks that he steadfastly ignores. Harry is here somewhere, but Louis doesn’t know where because he’s been avoiding her.

It’s Harry who finds Louis sitting in the laundry room nearing two in the morning, wedged between the dryer and a basket full of blankets, one of which he’s dragged around his torso.

“What’s up, Lou?” she asks, pulling the basket away and sitting down next to him. 

He blinks at her. His eyes are rimmed red; he knows because he looked in a bathroom mirror earlier, and he imagines he probably looks a bit like a walking corpse might. Or a sitting corpse wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket burrito. 

Harry shifts closer and puts one arm around him. Louis leans into it, and then they start gradually shifting together until their arms are wrapped each other, blanket fallen to the floor around them. Louis has his face tucked into Harry’s shoulder and when he breathes in all he can smell is how much he loves her.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Harry is murmuring, and Louis fights back tears. She doesn’t even know what’s wrong, and she’s still here for him. There’s no way Louis could ever deserve her, and that’s why he can never tell her. It wouldn’t be fair to hold her back.

-

There’s a brush of air against the back of Louis’ neck. He shivers involuntarily and turns to glare at Harry. She smiles beatifically back. 

“Stop,” Louis says flatly, looking back at his book.

Harry blows on his neck again.

“Harry,” Louis mutters in what he means to be a warning tone, not looking at her this time. She stifles a giggle and does it again. Louis reaches out to bat at her.

She catches his hand and tangles her fingers in his. When he looks up, she’s still smiling, and then she lifts her other hand to run her thumb across his cheek.

“Scratchy,” she says softly, and Louis has to fight not to close his eyes and lean into it. (He might fail a little. No one has to know.)

“M’supposed to be writing an essay,” he says. “Don’t you have lawyer-y things to study?”

“Rather study you,” Harry says teasingly, and Louis’ chest clenches.

“You can’t major in Louis Tomlinson, babe,” he says just as lightly, pulling away from her.

-

A minute later Harry has moved her chair closer and is leaning into Louis’ space. He doesn’t have the heart or the willpower to protest.

-

Louis finishes off his second pint of beer and stares over at Liam. He’d been invited out to the pub as a “lads’ night, y’know, just us two,” by Liam, but nearly an hour into it, Louis still has no idea why they’re doing this. He’s never gotten the impression that Liam was a huge footie fan like he and Niall are, but the intensity with which Liam is watching the telly screen right now would beg to differ.

“Is there a reason we’re here?” Louis asks finally. Liam turns to look at him and shrugs.

“I thought it would be nice to bond,” Liam says. “We’re both Harry’s best friends.”

“So we should be best friends, too?” Louis asks.

Liam smiles. “It would be nice.”

“Well, we’re not going to get any bonding done just sitting here,” Louis decides, hopping off his barstool. “Come on.”

Liam follows. Louis discovers he finds that a bit surprising.

“I like you a lot, you know,” Louis says eventually, once they’ve retrieved Louis’ football from his flat and walked over to a park to start kicking it around. “You’re not just Harry’s friend.”

Liam smiles and passes the ball back to Louis. “You’re not, either.” 

Later, flopped under a tree after a game of one on one that Louis had totally killed at, Liam says, “You’re in love with her, right?” and every muscle in Louis’ body tenses. “Only, I just don’t want you to hurt her, but I don’t want her to hurt you, either.”

Louis carefully avoids eye contact and shrugs. 

-

Even later, when they’re half stumbling back to Louis’ flat, drunk on the beer they’d decided to buy from the shop, Liam mumbles, “You know, she loves you, too, and that means I just can’t stop it from happening. I can’t.” 

Louis pretends he has no idea what he’s on about.

-

Harry falls asleep in Louis’ bed. It’s not anywhere near unheard of, and this time had been because he’d practically had to drag her out of the library to make her stop researching for a paper. He’s really just glad she’s asleep, even if she’s rolled over onto his arm and is weighing down on him so he can’t get to sleep himself.

She looks a sight, hair everywhere and mouth hanging slightly open, and somehow she still reminds Louis of a double spread in a fashion magazine. Louis has pretty much accepted that there will never be a time where he’ll be used to just how beautiful Harry is. He doesn’t have to be happy about it, though.

It makes him breathless and slightly loopy every time he thinks about it too hard, and he ends up doing crazy things like leaning to kiss Harry on the forehead. She’s his best friend, and he loves her. He’s allowed to do that much.

Harry shifts and rolls over, freeing Louis’ arm and shoving her face into a pillow. He tries to move, but his arm is dead weight and he can’t be bothered to drag it into a comfortable position, so he stays still. His arm starts to tingle, pins and needles crackling in his fingertips, and he stares over at Harry’s curls, wishing they’d never come into his life and ruined him.

He also wishes that they’d never leave.

-

“What’s your favourite flower?” Louis asks. 

“Why?” Harry asks, flipping the page of her textbook. “Are you going to buy me flowers?”

“Maybe,” Louis says. Harry looks up, an eyebrow raised. Louis sighs. “Probably not, but I could do at some point.”

“I like pansies,” Harry says. She pauses, skimming something in her book, and then sticks a post-it on the page before closing the book. “And poppies. Red ones.”

“Like in The Wizard of Oz?” Louis asks.

Harry laughs. “Yeah, Lou,” she says. “Like in The Wizard of Oz.”

It’s not until later when they’ve left the library to get caffeine at the closest Starbucks that Harry turns to him and asks, “What about you? What flowers do you like?”

Louis shrugs. “The ones you said are nice. I like those.” He flashes her his best smile. 

“Cop out,” Harry says, but there’s a smirk tugging at her lips.

-

“What would you do if you had one day to live?” Harry asks.

 _Love you_ , Louis thinks and doesn’t say.

-

“Hey Harry,” Louis says, sitting down across the table from her. “Do you want me to get you some food or something?”

Harry hums. Louis can’t tell if she meant to do so affirmatively or negatively or just to acknowledge him. 

“Coffee?” he tries. “Wait, you probably don’t need more coffee. Food? Yes? No? Nod or shake.”

Harry blinks at her book and flips a page. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping onto her biro. 

“Tea? I’ll even go make it myself instead of buying some from the shit place on campus?”

“Whatever,” Harry mumbles, and follows it up with something to do with Durkheim.

“To which thing?” Louis asks. 

Harry throws her pen on the table and looks up at him. “Can you just go away? I’m a little busy.”

Louis blinks. “I just--”

“Just leave! Some of us have real exams about serious subjects to revise for,” she snaps. 

Louis frowns and stands up. “Fine, see if I try to be nice to you ever again,” he says flippantly.

Harry doesn’t respond.

-

Sometimes the only way Louis can get through hours on his feet dealing with customers at the restaurant where he works is by imagining his sofa in vivid detail. Not his bed, because that’s _too_ nice and makes him even more exhausted, but the sofa--it’s just as much of a relief from standing and comes with a bonus telly in the same room for watching therapeutic films that star Chad Michael Murray.

It’s this that he’s looking forward to when he gets in from an extra afternoon shift he’d picked up a few days after Harry snapped at him in the library. He’s already pretty much forgiven her for things said while stressed out and too caffeinated, but he isn’t going to tell her that first. He does have some of his pride still intact. 

“Hey Louis, that you?” Zayn calls from the kitchen. “You should come in here.”

Louis groans loudly and ignores her in favour of flopping down on the sofa. 

“No, really,” Zayn says. “Your man crush can wait, I have something better.”

Louis doubts this claim very much, but it’s enough to pique his curiosity and get him to drag himself to the kitchen.

There’s cake on the counter. That’s the first thing he notices, because it’s bright white and blue and contrasts with the monochrome kitchen. Harry’s standing next to it, which is the second thing he notices, because it’s Harry.

“Surprise,” Harry says softly. “Made you a cake.”

“What?” Louis asks, genuinely a bit confused.

“Check out the writing on it,” Zayn says. “I helped with that part.”

Louis moves closer so he can read the top of the cake, where _Sorry I’m a grumpy bitch_ is written in neat frosted letters across it. It’s surrounded by little blue hearts. He snorts a laugh.

“So yeah,” Harry says, “I’m sorry for implying your major is shit and for being mean when you were being nice.”

“And you made cake to express how sorry you are,” Louis says.

“And I made cake, yes,” Harry says.

Louis really wants to tell her he loves her, but that would be a little too close to the truth for comfort, even though she wouldn’t think of anything of it. “Apology accepted,” he says instead. “I can eat this, right?”

“Yes, Louis, it’s edible.” Harry rolls her eyes. 

“I want some,” Zayn says. “I helped.”

Harry gets them forks to eat it instead of bothering to slice it, and Louis takes the opportunity to get cake all over Harry’s nose just to see her scrunch it up in mock anger. Zayn shakes her head at them and demands they keep practically half the cake saved for when Niall gets home.

-

Along with Harry, Louis has discovered in the year and a half since meeting her, comes a lot of touching and a lack of personal space. It’s right up Louis’ alley, really--he’s never been known to respect a personal bubble--but Harry likes to manifest it in cuddling a lot of the time, whereas Louis prefers to lovingly assault and possibly maim or bruise the person. 

Harry’s way is probably better. It’s certainly a lot more comfortable. 

“We’re almost done with uni,” Harry says idly. They’re lying on Louis’ bed, Harry tucked into Louis’ side with her head on his shoulder.

“For now, yeah,” Louis says. 

Harry shifts so she can look up at him. “For now? What are you planning to do after we graduate?”

Louis makes an approximation of a shrug. “Postgrad. There’s this year long program here that I want to do.” It’s been his plan for so long that he barely even thinks about it anymore. Plans, straight lines, bullet point lists--those are what holds Louis together.

Harry makes a noise that Louis can’t interpret. “Oh.”

“Why, what are you going to do?” 

Harry is quiet for so long, fidgeting with the hem of Louis’ t-shirt, that he comes up with all number of terrifying things Harry could want to do, including but not limited to shaving off all her hair, joining the army, and getting shot. Comparatively, her saying that she wants to take some time off before law school and go travel the world doesn’t sound too bad.

Then it sinks in. “Like... travelling,” Louis says slowly. “Like away from here.”

“Yeah, that’s how travelling works, Lou,” Harry says. 

_Like away from me,_ Louis thinks. “That sounds fun,” he says.

“Hopefully,” Harry mumbles into his collarbone. “I’ll send you postcards from everywhere I go.”

“Well,” Louis says after a moment, “we’re not quite done yet.”

“Not yet,” Harry agrees, snuggling closer. Louis lets his hand rest on her hip and squeezes his eyes shut tight--like if he can’t see it, time will stop passing. 

-

 **Niall Horan** @nialler1993  
up early,cant sleep! graduatin today... crazy!  
9:04 AM - 27 Jun 14

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
It’s been a fantastic three years.. congrats grads! .x  
12:14 PM - 27 Jun 14

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
Can’t believe it’s been three years since I went off to uni, and now it’s over ! Time for a new chapter :)  
12:32 PM - 27 Jun 14

 **Niall Horan** @nialler1993  
@zaynmalik if you dont stop wit the hair were gona be late !  
1:47 PM - 27 Jun 14

 **zaynmalik** @zaynmalik  
@nialler1993 Come here and let me fix your lipgloss :) x  
3:02 PM - 27 Jun 14

 **Liam Payne** @liam_payne  
Met some of my best friends these past coupla yearsss:) congrats to everyooonnneee :)  
3:43 PM - 27 Jun 14

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Has anyone seen my shoes???  
2:33 AM - 28 Jun 14

 **Louis Tomlinson** @Louis_Tomlinson  
Lately I been I been losing sleep dreamin boutt the things we could be....  
2:48 AM - 28 Jun 14

-

“Have you seen my shoes?” Harry asks Louis. 

Louis hits the lock button on his mobile and tucks it into his pocket. “What shoes?”

“The ones I was wearing, Lou,” Harry says. “I seem to have... misplaced them.” She looks around, her face reminiscent of a confused puppy, hair wild and frizzy around her face, and Louis’ heart feels like it’s swelling out of his ribcage.

“Are you walking around barefoot?” he asks, and Harry sticks out a foot at him in answer, wiggling her toes. Her painted toenails sparkle in the dim light outside the building the party is going on inside of. “Well, that’s no good,” he says. “You could catch a disease. Like... like...” He can’t think of a foot disease. Encephalogram? Wait. No.

Harry makes a noncommittal noise and collapses against Louis, burrowing her face into his chest. “M’tired and m’drunk,” she mumbles.

“Me too,” Louis says, swaying a bit under Harry’s weight. “Should we go home?”

“Back t’yours,” Harry says. “Don’t need shoes anyway.”

“You do,” Louis says, but it seems like so much effort to actually try to find her shoes, so they don’t. Louis calls a cab to take them back to his flat instead, and insists on carrying Harry across the pavement so he can be sure she doesn’t slice her foot open or something. She giggles and smacks him at first, but eventually just lets him, her arms around his neck and her head resting on his shoulder. 

He has to put her down to get the door open, and she drapes herself over his back anyway, hands pressing into his chest. He fumbles the keys more than usual. “Need help with that?” Harry asks, and Louis shakes his head.

They make it inside. Louis is considering getting some water, but Harry heads straight for Louis’ bedroom and flops down on his bed, so Louis follows her because that’s what he does.

Harry gloms onto his side as soon as he lies down like she’s some large humanoid barnacle. Louis considers what it would be like to live underwater. Very blue, he thinks. But then most of his life is spent being blue. Haha. Jokes. Fuck, Louis is tired. 

He thinks he falls asleep then, at least a little, so when Harry kisses him he’s pretty sure he’s dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time. Later he’ll say that that’s the only reason that he kisses back, soft at first, but then eager, pressing himself closer to Harry’s skin, flipping them so he can get a better angle. He only did it because he thought it was a dream. Try him, judge and jury. 

_Guilty as charged_ , Louis thinks when Harry kisses him again, and then again, and again. Guilty of wanting, of hoping, of dreaming, of imagining the _could have beens_ and the _what ifs_. Guilty of thinking that maybe this was a silent promise to stay, that maybe each touch was the words Harry couldn’t say.

-

“Come with me,” Harry says.

Louis stares at her. The silence is deafening. “No,” he says finally.

Her face falls. The clouds start to pour rain. The desert cracks open, leaving giant crevasses. “Why not?” Her voice is tiny and makes no sense.

“I can’t. I have to...” He trails off, but she just keeps staring at him, eyes wide. A single curl falls next to her face, whisper soft. “I have to keep living,” he tells the curl.

The curl bobs like a nod, like it understands. Harry’s face crumples. “What do you think I’m going to be doing?” she asks. The edges of her voice are sharp, and Louis instinctively flinches away.

“I have a plan,” Louis says helplessly.

They stare at each other. Louis wishes he could figure out what he’s supposed to say here, the perfect words to make everything all right.

“I don’t understand,” Harry says eventually, resigned and sad.

“I guess that’s the problem,” Louis says. 

 

_after_

 

Harry stares out the tiny oval shaped window at the tarmac. Her hands are folded in her lap; the right has a white knuckled grip on the left like she’s bracing against pain. She focuses on her breathing: in _one two three four,_ out _one two three four._

She can see people loading luggage onto the plane. It takes awhile, but eventually she spots her own suitcase, strips of bright floral print fabric wrapped around the handles gently swaying in the wind. It’s only half packed, really, clothes just thrown in instead of folded neatly, because once Louis had said no all she had wanted was to get out. 

_Louis._ No, she’s not thinking about Louis. She slams the window cover down like punctuation on that decision, and the man in the seat next to her starts, looking at her in confusion. She tries to smile reassuringly, _nothing to see here_ , but it comes out twisted, more of a grimace, and the man looks away quickly.

Harry shakes out her hands, then her hair. _It wasn’t anything_ , she tells herself sternly. _He was drunk. I was drunk. It didn’t_ mean _anything._

She’s repeated it so many times that it sounds like truth. 

She checks the time. They should be taking off soon. This is confirmed when a flight attendant comes by and tells her to put the window cover back up for take off. She does so, avoiding the look the man next to her is giving her. She sits back and closes her eyes. One short flight and she’ll be somewhere else, which is all she’s ever really wanted for as long as she can remember. 

The plane is starting to move, the pilot’s voice crackling over the speaker first, then an attendant takes over. She keeps her eyes closed. The other times she was on a plane, she watched the ground slowly shrink away and eventually turn to clouds. This isn’t like the other times.

 _I don’t love him,_ she tells herself. She swallows and her ears pop. Her left hand is clinging to her right now. _I don’t love him._

It sounds like truth.

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Hello Italy. instagram.com/x/jhuyBVHkHC  
5:13 AM - 4 Jul 14

-

Harry has kicked off her sandals so that she can press her toes into the cool cobblestones underneath the cafe table. There’s a light breeze and a guy sitting across the table from her, talking about something she doesn’t care about, construction or interior design or something. She’d met him earlier at a coffee shop, and his smile had made him kind of look like Louis.

He doesn’t look like Louis now, the jaw and the accent and the everything wrong, and she wishes she’d never agreed to meet him for lunch. 

There’s a song playing over the speakers, faint on the wind but infinitely more interesting than this guy. It reminds Harry of Louis, the soft lilting melody and words she can’t quite understand.

Two weeks in Italy have browned Harry’s skin and lightened her heart more than she ever thought possible when she was on the plane, which had been not at all ever again. She thinks maybe she’ll be all right eventually.

Jul 20, 13.03 Harry  
Heard a song, it reminded me of you .xx

Harry fidgets with her phone, waiting for Louis to reply. The guy (why can’t she remember his name? Paul? Pierre?) is still droning on, apparently not needing her to contribute her opinion of crenellation to the conversation. He barely even breaks off when the waitress brings them their drinks. Harry sips at her coffee and tries to get Paul/Pierre to talk about something interesting without much success. 

Jul 20, 13.10 Louis  
That’s nice babe.

“What do you think?” Paul/Pierre asks, and Harry looks up at him in confusion, a smile teasing at her lips. The response is just so _Louis_. She misses him, she can admit that much to herself. Paul/Pierre’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you okay?”

“I have to go,” Harry says, hurriedly shoving her feet back into her shoes and pushing her chair back. “This was lovely, you’re lovely, I’m sorry.”

“Is everything all right?” Paul/Pierre asks in concern, standing up with her.

“It will be,” Harry tells him. “Eventually.”

-

Jul 23, 19.02 Harry  
Flight gets in at 2 AM, is that ok?

Jul 23, 19.13 Liam  
Ill be there no worries

-

Harry waits a good few days before she goes to see Louis at his flat. He opens the door immediately when she knocks and the sight of him is so familiar she loses her breath for a moment. His hair is styled into a smooth quiff, though, and she wants to mess it up so that she can see his eyes blink out from beneath his fringe like she’s used to.

“Hi,” she says. Louis smiles and gestures for her to come in.

“Sparrows?” Louis says, touching a thumb to the tip of one of the wings of her latest tattoos, the one on the left side. Her chest tingles. Harry fights the urge to close her eyes and let him touch her more. It would be so easy.

“They just look nice,” Harry says, shrugging.

Louis nods. “Very punk rock,” he says. His hand drops and he turns away from her. “Want a cuppa?”

It’s all Harry can do to merely reply “Sure” instead of blurting out _Sod the tea, come back here, at least give me a hug._

He makes the tea. His hands are steady and delicate, stir in milk _one two three_ clockwise just like always, and he smiles when he hands Harry her cup. She smiles back and neither of them say anything until they say goodbye again ten minutes later.

-

The thing is, she doesn’t actually _leave_ again. At least, not right away.

Instead her luggage becomes a feature in the corner of the room that used to belong to Niall and Zayn, an ever changing sculpture--sometimes a heap of a mess and other times stacked neatly, but never unpacked, always ready to leave again. Harry can tell that Louis doesn’t quite know what to make of it, and she doesn’t offer up an explanation beyond a quick assurance of “It’s only for a little while, don’t worry,” when Louis had stood accusingly in the doorway before work one morning.

She tries her best to make it normal, asking Louis how his day went and teasing him when he talks about his project and gets that happy flush and far away look. He smiles at her one day, a real smile with bright eyes, and Harry can’t do anything but smile back at him. 

Sometimes Louis looks at her strangely, worrying at his lip, and Harry’s not sure if he even knows that he’s doing it. On those days Harry takes it upon herself to go somewhere else for awhile. She spends time at Liam’s, at Niall and Zayn’s, meets up with other uni friends that haven’t left the area for lunches and coffee, and when Louis texts to ask where she is, she texts back and tells him. 

The smile on Louis’ face whenever she walks back through the door or he comes home to find her already sprawled across the sofa is tiny and disbelieving every time, and every time it feels like something is standing on her chest. She ignores it.

-

Aug 16, 20.11 Niall  
bored ! wanna elope?

Aug 16, 20.13 Harry  
Of course xx 

Aug 16, 20.13 Harry  
What about your girlfriend?

Aug 16, 20.15 Niall  
sod her! come over ! 

-

“I didn’t know how long our honeymoon's gonna be, so I just packed everything,” Harry says solemnly, holding up her carry on bag. Niall cracks up, which was exactly what Harry was going for.

“Get in here, you idiot,” Niall says, ruffling Harry’s hair as she walks past into the flat. Harry bats her hand away, but Niall grabs at her and pulls her in for one of Niall’s infamous bone crushing hugs. “Are you actually going somewhere?” Niall asks after, eyes fixed on Harry's suitcase, her hands still on Harry’s upper arms.

Harry shrugs. “Always going somewhere,” she says. “Where’s Zayn?”

Niall sighs and lets her hands drop to her sides. “She’s just visiting family, s’all. We’re not fighting, if that’s what you thought. And don’t think you’re avoiding the question, I want to know if you’re leaving again. Maybe I could come with you for a few weeks.”

Harry shakes her head. “No, I’m... I’m not leaving again yet. I brought my stuff to tease you. And because I bought you some stuff, remember I told you, but it’s...” She gestures helplessly at the large suitcase, which is in such disarray that it really had been easier just to zip it up and bring the whole thing instead of trying to sort through it.

Niall rolls her eyes, but she gamely starts going through Harry’s stuff with her, trying on whatever she can get her hands on in the worst combinations until Harry is laughing so hard she snorts and taking picture after picture of Niall making stupid faces. 

“This was fun,” Harry says sometime in the early morning, when they’ve put a film on and are flopped on the living room floor amidst Harry’s clothes, limbs overlapping. “Thanks.”

“No thanks necessary,” Niall says. There’s a long pause and then, “I miss you when you’re not here, you know?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, but later, halfway to sleep, it occurs to her that she doesn’t really.

-

Harry is rummaging through Louis’ fridge when she hears the door open. “Hey,” she calls out. “Did you eat at all last night? You can’t forget to eat, Louis, I keep telling you--” She cuts herself off when she turns around to see Louis standing in the entrance to the kitchen, looking pale white and clutching at the door frame. “Louis? Are you okay?”

“You’re here,” Louis says, voice far away, and Harry frowns, walking over to him and feeling his forehead. He lets her, which is almost surprising.

“Yeah, I’m here. Where’ve you been?”

“Picked up an extra shift,” Louis says, still sounding distant. “You didn’t--I texted you last night.”

Harry winces. “My mobile died right after I got to Niall’s; I didn’t have time to charge it.”

“You were just at Niall’s?” Louis asks. He’s still staring at her in disbelief, and Harry fidgets. “With all your stuff?”

Harry just nods. She doesn’t think he cares about explanations right now. “You thought I’d left?” 

He nods. He keeps staring at her, and she pulls him into a hug so that he can’t look at her like that anymore. After a moment, he hugs her back, stiff arms and splayed palms against her back. 

“Idiot,” she says, soft into the skin at the back of his neck. He huffs a laugh. It sounds more like a sob, but it’s a laugh all the same.

-

“Tea,” Harry says, switching out the empty mug on Louis’ desk for a fresh one. 

“Thanks,” Louis mumbles, scribbling something on his paper.

“What are you working on?” Harry asks, leaning against the desk and crossing her arms. “It’s summer, you haven’t even started school again yet.”

Louis stops writing, but he doesn’t look up at her. “Creativity waits for no man,” he says. “It’s better if I write now, when I’m not blocked and don’t need to, rather than when I am and I do.”

That, at least, makes as much sense as it can. She tells him as much, and adds, “Need help? Roses are red and violets are blue.”

He looks up at that. “Yes, thanks, Haz. I know you love your flowers.”

She giggles, and he grins at her. She straightens up, organizes a couple of strewn papers into a neat pile, and then says, “Get some sleep at some point. I don’t want you keeling over at work.”

“All right, Mum,” Louis says. Harry punches him in the shoulder. 

-

Aug 26, 17.33 Louis  
Where are you ? I’m thinking we order dinner tonight, yeah? 

Aug 26, 17.51 Louis  
You fancy Thai or pizza?

Aug 26, 18.20 Louis  
Pizza it is. Where are you ??

Aug 26, 19.44 Louis  
Are you coming back tonight?

-

Aug 26, 19.47 Louis  
Hey Liam, you seen Harry ?

-

Aug 26, 19:49 Liam  
Louis is txting me nowww what do you wanttt me to do?

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Why do clouds look so much puffier from above?  
8:04 PM - 26 Aug 14

-

Aug 26, 20:15 Liam  
your being a jerk, harry

-

Aug 26, 20:40 Liam  
sorrryyyyyy :( 

Aug 27, 00:02 Louis  
its fine liam, don’t worry about it.

-

Ireland is very green, and the people are very nice, and Harry drinks a lot of beer in pubs, laughs a lot, and tries not to think about Louis. 

She stays with Niall’s family for a bit, listening to her mum tell stories of when Niall was a wee thing and asking all the right questions and laughing in all the right spots, and she goes to bed at night in Niall’s old bedroom. In the darkness is the only time she’ll let herself think about what Louis’ face must have looked like when he realized she was actually gone this time.

 _Idiot_ , she’d called him, but he was never the one who was wrong. It was only a matter of time, and Louis had known that better than even she did.

For a moment, in between making Louis cups of tea and texting him about what they were going to have for dinner, Harry had forgotten that she couldn’t let herself fall into domesticity, that she couldn’t settle down and wait for Louis to frown and tell her that she needed to leave, that there wasn’t a permanent place for her.

Really, she thinks, staring at where she knows there’s a poster of the Spice Girls on Niall’s wall, it was a good thing she’d remembered sooner rather than later. This way was better for everyone. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

-

 **Liam Payne** @liam_payne  
@Harry_Styles misss youuuuu. when r u gona be backkkkk? needdddd to talkkkk to u  
7:22 PM - 6 Sept 14

-

Harry runs into Louis at the Asda that’s closest to his flat, which is not what she’d been thinking when she’d decided to go there to get milk for Liam, at least not consciously. If she had, she might have decided to go to Waitrose instead, but no, she’s stuck standing at the end of the cereal aisle, staring at Louis. He hasn’t noticed her yet, intent on looking at the shelves, and when he reaches out to grab a box, she can see a splash of red on the inside of his arm. A tattoo?

She could still leave before he sees her, but there are roots growing from her feet. She may never move again. He looks up and she can tell the moment he sees her, because his face changes; his mouth sets in a line and a matching tiny vertical one appears between his eyebrows. She lifts a hand and waves. He doesn’t wave back, but he does start walking toward her. 

“Harry,” he says when he reaches her. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

Of course he didn’t, because she didn’t tell him. She shrugs. “Coco Pops?” she asks, gesturing to the box in Louis’ hand. He lifts it, turning his hand a bit, and she can just about see the tattoo now. She grabs his wrist without thinking, turning his arm the rest of the way and holding it where it is, and the sudden touch startles them both, looking up into each other’s eyes and staring for a moment before Harry looks back at his arm. “A poppy,” she says.

Louis pulls his arm away. Harry’s hand closes into a fist. “Yeah.”

There are things she could say, there must be, but Louis has one of her favourite flowers tattooed on him and she can’t think of anything at all, let alone polite words that one exchanges with a friend they haven’t seen in awhile. 

“It was nice seeing you,” Louis says, and then he’s walking away again, and Harry can’t follow him because the roots growing from her feet have curled and she can’t uproot them. It’s an odd feeling. She’s usually more like a leaf in the wind. She wonders when that changed.

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Prague-licious. instagram.com/x/hqULNhdL  
3:02 PM - 13 Sept 14

 **zaynmalik** @zaynmalik  
@Harry_Styles that was horrible x  
4:32 AM - 14 Sept 14

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
@zaynmalik shhhhh .xx  
11:03 AM - 14 Sept 14

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight .xx instagram.com/x/laKEnsSy  
5:11 PM - 20 Sept 14

-

Sept 24, 18.16 Louis  
Hey. Having a good time ? 

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Swiss chocolate is not a joke.  
8:54 PM - 12 Oct 14

 **Niall Horan** @nialler1993  
@Harry_Styles if u dont bring me back a ton theres gona be trouble !  
9:23 PM - 12 Oct 14

-

Harry isn’t quite sure how the night went from quietly sitting down on the sofa eating Chinese take away together to standing on opposite sides of the living room, a container of noodles knocked over in between them and Louis yelling obscenities at her, but she’s pretty sure it was her fault for mentioning that she was leaving for France tomorrow. Usually they don’t talk about it, and this is the unspoken reason.

“You need to get the fuck over it!” she yells back at him when he takes a moment to breathe. “Not everything is about you. You’re not being fair to me, and you know it.”

“Oh, I do, do I? It isn’t _fair_ that I have to stay here while you fly around the world and tweet pictures of scenery and text me when you feel like it but never respond when I text you? Well fuck you, Harry, because I love you and it fucking hurts, and _that’s_ not fair. That’s fucking _bullshit._ ”

Harry stares at him. He stares back for a moment, face unnaturally pale, and then he abruptly turns and walks out of the room. She hears a door click shut a moment later, and when she goes to look, it’s his bedroom door that’s closed.

She cleans up the food, putting it away neatly, and then sits down on the sofa. She thinks about putting on the telly just so she’s not sitting here doing nothing, but her hands fumble the remote and she decides she doesn’t care. She wouldn’t be able to watch anything anyway.

She should leave. That’s probably what Louis expected her to do, which is most of the reason why she doesn’t. She wants to ignore everything that just happened, but she doesn’t want to run away from it. They’re different things, she tells herself.

Eventually Harry can’t stand it anymore. She gets up and walks to Louis’ door, standing outside creepily trying to hear what’s happening on the other side. She can’t hear anything. She spends another minute with her hand on the doorknob, debating, before she finally cracks it open and peers in.

Louis is sitting on the bed. He looks over and looks away quickly when he sees it’s her. She pushes the door open the rest of the way and makes the split second decision to just ignore it.

He doesn’t protest when she sits down next to him. She takes that as a good sign. 

“You’re still here,” Louis says, voice flat.

“Where else would I be?” Harry asks, and Louis laughs hollowly, a sharp burst of sound that manages to anger Harry all over again. It’s not her fault that he has his stupid fucking life _plan_ or whatever. She shouldn’t be the one getting punished for it. She opens her mouth to say something and “Will you come with me?” is what falls out, the words tripping over themselves in a rush. She fumbles to catch up. “You said you wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, and France is really nice this time of year. Apparently.”

“No,” Louis says immediately. “You don’t mean that.”

Harry can’t muster the energy to protest, to tell him that _yes_ she does mean that, thank you very much, and didn’t you just say you love me? You don’t mean _that_ if you won’t come with me.

“Right,” she says instead. She gets up and leaves, and she doesn’t bother looking back.

-

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Harry says, voice muffled against Liam’s shoulder. “Everything I say and do hurts him and if I don’t do that I hurt me and it’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair,” Liam says, hands carefully running down her back in an attempt at comfort. Harry snorts and it comes out more like a sob. Liam’s t-shirt is already soaked through and it’s just another thing for Harry to feel bad about. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Liam says. “You’ll get through this.”

All Liam knows how to say is platitudes, but they’re soothing in their familiarity anyway. This is why she always runs to and cries on Liam. He doesn’t know what to do, but at least he’s consistent about it.

“You need to say goodbye to him,” Liam says. “For awhile this time, I think.”

Harry frowns. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Before you leave tomorrow.”

When Liam starts giving real advice, that’s when you know you’ve fucked up. Harry sighs and wipes at her eyes. “Okay,” she says softly. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

-

Harry knocks on Louis’ door early the next morning, early enough that she’s afraid he might still be sleeping and she won’t be able to say goodbye at all. He opens the door though, blinking blearily at her, and her chest tightens. 

“I’m sorry,” she says before he can get a word out, and he snaps his mouth shut and just looks at her. The words fall between them like rocks. She shrugs minutely and tries not to meet his eyes. 

He holds his arms out a bit and gestures for her to come in. She does, easily slipping into his arms and wrapping hers around him. She can almost tuck his head beneath her chin. 

“Sorry,” Louis murmurs into her neck. “Sorry, sorry.” The apology is heavy, and Harry thinks he might be trying to apply it not just to the fight but to everything: to loving her, to admitting it, to staying, to letting her go. Maybe she’d done the same with hers, meant to apologize for all the opposite things.

They stay wrapped up together for a long time, breathing in each other, eyes squeezed closed, and it takes almost as long to pull themselves apart, like they’re trying to counteract a magnetic pull. “Bye,” Harry says when Louis’ fingers are still running along the inside of her wrist. 

He looks up at her and finally lets his arm drop to his side. 

“Goodbye,” Louis says. He presses his lips together and takes a step back, putting space between them, grabbing for the door without taking his eyes off her and pushing it closed. It clicks loudly and the ground tilts back to normal, gravity shifting back to Harry’s feet.

“Goodbye,” she says again, whispering it to the closed door like a secret before finally turning around and walking away. It hurts like it’s the first time, pulsing under Harry’s skin and making her hands shake the slightest bit, cheeks flushing in anger that it has to hurt at all. 

-

Paris is maybe the best thing that’s happened to Harry in a long time. It’s all a lot less romantic and a lot more dirty and real than it had always sounded, but Harry likes it all the more for it. She spends hours wandering the streets taking pictures and buying pastries from cafes and bakeries along the way, and then she climbs to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where she meets a group of lads that are from England too.

The guy that first approached her’s name is Todd, and he’d said he thought she looked lonely, which was only a line because his friends dared him, he tells her later, but he’d actually sort of meant it, too. He’s high when he says this, and so is Harry, so she believes him.

She spends most of her time in France after that at least a little bit high, which makes things like looking at the lights over the river at night and wandering through back alleys taking pictures of rocks that much more exciting. 

(She considers deleting the pictures later, because they really are terrible, but she ends up keeping them because they remind her of the way her cheeks ached from smiling and laughing at the boys’ butchered attempts at French. Not that she was much better.)

Todd kisses her once, in a bar, and she lets him, even kisses him back. It’s him who pulls away and frowns a little, saying, “You’re not ready for this, are you? That’s okay, I understand,” before ordering another round of drinks. Harry doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t think it’s worth saying anything about, which, she thinks later, might actually have been the point.

-

She’s lying on the grass in a park at night, staring up at the dark sky and pretending that the few satellites she can see are actually stars (sometimes she really misses the country) when she registers that this is probably the most alive she’s felt since she boarded a plane to Italy. She laughs aloud at that, closes her eyes and feels her blood thrum through her veins.

“S’up?” Todd asks, offering her a spliff. He holds it while she sits up a bit to take a drag and then flops back down.

“You ever feel, I dunno, really alive?” she asks, smiling lazily over at him. 

“Sure, yeah, I figure,” Todd says. “It’s like you’re more than just existing, like maybe life’s got a point.” 

Harry nods. “Yeah.”

“Where’ve the others gone? You wanna find ‘em?”

“Rather just lie here if it’s all the same,” Harry says.

“S’all the same, same,” Todd agrees, nodding, and lies down next to her.

It’s nice, Harry thinks, to feel alive and have someone there with you who gets it.

-

Harry spends a week around the Christmas holidays at home, eating way too much food and laughing at her sister’s bad jokes. Her stepfather, Robin, makes her show him all her pictures and tell him stories about her travels; the only thing, he told her, he wants in return for lending her money, as long as she saves where she can. 

Anne asks a lot of questions about Harry’s friends that Harry struggles to find the answers to, sometimes needing to say _I don’t know_ and subsequently feel horrible about it, and when Anne asks about Louis Harry changes the subject as soon as possible. Gemma gives her a knowing look over her glass of champagne, and Harry knows she’ll have to tell her everything when Anne and Robin have gone to bed.

She spends a lot of time editing and printing pictures for lack of anything better to do--she’d let her family pick out pictures they wanted done up and neatly framed as presents. A lot of the pictures remind her of Louis, try as she might to pretend they don’t, and eventually she gives up and prints the one that she keeps getting stuck on, a picture she’d taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower. It’s of the city down below, only Harry had fumbled the camera when Todd came up to her and snapped the picture from a strange angle, catching her wrist and consequently the tattoo that reads _things I can’t._

She scribbles a sentence on the back of it, sticks it in an envelope, and mails it before she can think better of it.

-

_Happy Christmas!  
miss you, hope you’re well_

_Harry .xx_

-

Just after the new year is rung in, Harry is in Barcelona, being wonderfully, blissfully alone. Just her, her camera, and streets just waiting for Harry to wander down them. 

Things are always simultaneously better and worse when she’s alone, and she honestly isn’t sure which she prefers. 

The sun on her face says alone is better, so she takes a selfie with her phone and doesn’t argue.

-

Harry meets Nick in a club in Ibiza. Specifically, she meets her in the toilet of a club in Ibiza. She’s looking weepy in a corner, dabbing at her heavily made up eyes with some toilet roll, and Harry is pretty sure that usually you leave crying girls in club toilets alone, but she can’t help it.

“I like your trousers,” Harry says, because she does. They’re these vertical black and white striped jeans that basically look like they’re painted on to the girl’s legs, and Harry wants them. The crying girl looks up, startled. “You all right?” Harry adds.

“I’m fine,” she says, stuffing the toilet roll into the bin. “I’m just being stupid.”

“I doubt that,” Harry says. “D’you want me to help you fix your makeup? And your hair?”

Her hand flies to her hair, which is short and styled into a very tall quiff that’s leaning violently to one side, and she runs over to grimace into a dirty mirror. “Ugh,” she says.

“I have liner in my bag,” Harry says. “And hair gel.”

“That would be great, ta,” she says. “I’m Nick.”

Harry offers her own name, already pulling out her emergency toiletries bag. She helps Nick fix her look, and by the time she’s done, they’ve bonded over having typical boy names and Nick has told Harry about Matt, the boy she’d been “not crying, okay” over. They’ve been best friends and coworkers for years, but Matt has a girlfriend and doesn’t see Nick _that way_ at all.

“Sometimes it just hits me that we’re never going to be the perfect couple I see in my head and I have to take a moment,” Nick explains. “Usually Aimee is here to help me through it, but she’s off holidaying with her boyfriend somewhere else. Always holidaying, those two, I can barely keep up. Matt and I are here for work, mostly.” She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, you’re a god send, Harry. Let me buy you a drink, okay? Come on.”

Nick likes to talk a _lot,_ Harry learns, which makes sense when she mentions that she’s a radio DJ, introducing Matt to her as “my producer, he keeps me in line, right, Matty?” The fond look Matt gives Nick at that makes Harry suspect that maybe things aren’t quite as hopeless as Nick thinks, Matt’s girlfriend notwithstanding.

They get inadvisably pissed on colourful cocktails, and Harry takes a bunch of pictures and posts them on Instagram, along with a video that’s nothing but random flashes of colour and loud club music. Matt’s a really good dancer, Harry discovers, and Nick gets by on half-sexy flailing. 

Matt excuses himself and goes back to their hotel, but Nick insists that she needs to stay out with her new friend, which leads to them wandering down a street nearing five in the morning, missing half their clothes and singing loudly and off-key. Miraculously, they make it back to Nick’s hotel without being arrested, and that’s enough to cement a “beautiful new friendship, look, I put a heart next to my name in your phone,” according to Nick. Harry agrees, obviously, because she then proceeds to spill her entire life story and all her deep feelings about Louis to Nick. Nick nods and gets Harry some more alcohol, which is all Harry ever wants in a friend. When Nick says they’re flying back to London the next day, Harry almost considers going with them. She wouldn’t even be in the same city as Louis, it would be fine. 

It wouldn’t, really, though, because the closer she gets the harder it is to stay away.

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
Stripy trousers selfie :) @grimmers pic.twitter.com/xxxxxxx  
2:29 PM - 6 Mar 15

 **nick grimshaw** @grimmers  
@Harry_Styles I want those back!!!!  
3:46 PM - 6 Mar 15

-

Mexico is hot. Harry is sure that this is the one thing she’ll remember years down the line: that she never stopped sweating for a second the entire month she was in the country, and that no amount of frozen drinks solved the problem, mostly because she kept buying them at crowded parties. 

She makes friends with a girl that’s staying in the same hotel as her, but she doesn’t stay very long compared to Harry, so it’s a short lived friendship featuring a lot of complaining about how hot it is and attempting to pour ice and water on each other to cool down. Once she’s gone Harry loses the will to even leave her hotel room, where she at least has a fan, and it’s a blessing that that’s when Nick chooses to text her and asks if she wants to meet her and some friends in America.

Harry really, really does.

-

Nick insists she needs to take Harry up to her room when Harry gets into Los Angeles, “just us girls, soz, Matt”, so they can have a heart to heart. When they get there, Nick flops down on the bed and sighs dramatically. Harry raises an eyebrow. 

“What’s up?” she asks.

The corner of Nick’s mouth twitches up. “Matt’s broken up with his girlfriend.”

Harry shrieks a little and jumps onto the bed next to Nick. “So? Did he say anything?”

“Well, no,” Nick says, “but this is better than it was before.”

Privately, Harry thinks that no, it’s not, because now if Matt doesn’t want to be with Nick, it isn’t just because there’s someone else. It’s because he really doesn’t like Nick. 

“I mean, fuck him anyway if he still doesn’t want to get up on this,” Nick is saying, gesturing to herself. “That’s what I always say, right? I don’t care. I’m not gonna wait around.”

“Of course not,” Harry says, nodding. 

“But still,” Nick says after a long pause, “it’s something.”

-

America is great. Well, California is great; Harry’s not sure about the rest of it. It’s basically Ibiza 2.0, clubbing and drinking margaritas at night and lying around on the beach during the day. Harry loves it, loves this group of hipsters in too large sunglasses pretending they’re glamorous when they’re really a bunch of idiots. She meets Aimee and Ian and spends every moment after that pretending to puke at how cute they are with Alexa and Pixie. Annie isn’t nearly as bad with her boyfriend--they’re the coolest DJs in their circle, Harry gathers, and she discovers they deserve the title after they both DJ at a club one night. 

There’s Cara, too, with maybe the prettiest face Harry has ever seen, and they make out one night at a pool party until Cara leans back, wipes off the smudges of lipstick on Harry’s mouth, and then jumps in the pool without another word. Harry finds she doesn’t mind, really, and tries not to consider that too hard. 

She sometimes catches Nick watching Matt, and other times she catches Matt watching Nick, and she counts it as lucky that no one cries in the toilet at any clubs. 

“You watch each other, y’know,” Harry drunkenly slurs at Nick one night. Nick looks up from her phone and raises an eyebrow. “You ‘n’ Matt. I think you’re gonna be fine.”

“Well, thanks,” Nick says, drawing out the syllables. 

“You’re welcome,” Harry says. She’s about to go find another drink, but Nick stops her with a hand on her arm. 

“You’re going to be fine, too,” she says, more serious than Harry has ever seen her look. “Everything will work out.”

Harry pulls away and doesn’t say anything.

-

She thinks about it later, on the plane back to Europe. (She’s headed to Luxemburg City because it had sounded fancy, and she likes fancy things.) She thinks about the set of Nick’s jaw and how sure she’d seemed, and dismisses it. Just because other people have a chance doesn’t mean that she does. She doesn’t even want to have a chance. She just wants to go back to when she’d never hurt anyone.

-

Apr 17, 03.59 Nick  
So Matt just proclaimed his love for me on air and then we shagged.

Apr 17, 04.03 Harry  
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-

It arrives by priority airmail, wrapped in nondescript brown parcel paper and taped within an inch of its life, on a Friday in late April. Harry is in Belgium. The customs sticker reads _Contents: 1 book_ and _Liam Payne_ is written neatly beside _Sender’s Address_ , followed by what Harry recognizes as her own flat’s address, probably so it would get sent back to her flat if it didn’t arrive here before she left. Liam’s thoughtful like that. Harry’s hands, miraculously, don’t actually shake as she takes it from the receptionist at the hotel and up to her room, but she feels like they do.

She opens it right away, because she thinks if she doesn’t then she never will, and then there it is, a shiny brand new paperback with Louis Tomlinson emblazoned across the bottom of the front cover. A piece of note paper falls out of the packaging and Harry picks it up. 

_Got this for you like you asked. Call me if you need. Liam xxxx_

Harry puts the book ( _if you want me to write a poem (about you)_ is the title, written in tiny white print along the edges of a daisy on the front cover, and it makes Harry nauseous to even look at it) down on her bedside table and walks away. She walks all the way to a corner shop, where she buys a box of wine, and then she walks back to her room, sits on the bed, turns on the telly, and starts drinking. 

She’s not even really sure what she’s watching, and after awhile it stops mattering. She’s not so much drinking wine and watching telly as she is drinking wine and stealing glances at the book.

Eventually, after she’s already thrown up once and is on her last dregs of wine, she turns off the telly altogether and just stares at the book. She falls asleep like that, her empty cup in her hand.

When she wakes up, the book is, of course, still there. Harry bites her lip and goes to brush her teeth. It doesn’t feel right to read Louis’ poetry when her mouth is fuzzy and dry. She comes back and sits on the edge of the bed and picks up the book. It’s not very heavy, really, but Harry feels as though she may as well be holding the planet.

She cracks it open and flips past the title page. The words “To my girls xx” stare out at her, stark black on the page. She squeezes her eyes shut tight and wonders if Louis thinks of her as one of his girls anymore. She doesn’t deserve to be his girl, she knows that much.

How the hell is she supposed to read all--she checks--fuck, nearly 100 pages if she can’t even hold it together after she’s read the dedication? She should have done it when she was more drunk and less hungover. Louis deserves better, though, even if it’s not like he’ll ever know, and so she turns the page.

By the time she’s done, there are tears streaking her face, and she knows she was wrong when she thought she was holding the planet. She’s holding all the pieces of Louis, ripped out and mixed up and not quite put back together, and somehow she’s the protagonist of the story. Antagonist would probably be more accurate, Harry thinks bitterly, but that’s not how Louis has painted her. She’s the girl with the curls and the shadows and imprints of Louis’ fingertips, the girl with striped nail polish she tried to wash off, the girl who left and came back and left and never came back. She’s the girl with the sun in her hair and the endless green eyes like summer nights, and her entire body aches with it, threatening to wither from the inside out. Even though she never asked for it, somewhere along the line she became Louis’ heart, and then she left him. She’s never made a bigger mistake in her life, and she’s fairly sure she never will again.

Harry reads it again, because how could she do anything but, and when she reaches the last page again, she knows. Between the lines, in the pauses between the stanzas of poems about Harry and about Louis and about neither but actually about both, Harry found what she’s spent months looking for. 

There’s this boy with this wily grin and an arse to kill for, who drinks every cup of tea like it might be his last and touches Harry like she’s steel and he might break himself on her skin, and he’s hidden himself away in his poetry, trying to pretend he isn’t the whole point. Harry knows better, which is hilarious, because when has she ever really known anything? Even this is stupid, realising this now, after all the times she’s brushed off anything that looked like an emotion and then wondered why she couldn’t feel anything when she kissed other people. 

She knows now. There’s no point in pretending otherwise when Louis has published everything they fucked up for the world to see, even if they don’t know what they’re looking at. 

Harry packs the book into the bag she carries with her everywhere and books a train ticket to Germany.

-

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
The Swedish sure are pretty… instagram.com/x/ijaBHjvk  
3:03 PM - 24 Jun 15

 **Liam Payne** @liam_payne  
@Harry_Styles thereee isn’t any swedishhh in that pictureee harryy  
8:49 PM - 24 Jun 15

 **Harry Styles** @Harry_Styles  
@liam_payne Use your imagination mate, come on.  
11:03 AM - 25 Jun 15

-

Harry spends the majority of June and July taking a roundabout route through Europe on the way to Greece. She heads north first, stopping in Norway and Sweden, and then starts heading back south through Finland and a brief excursion to Russia before she’s in Estonia. She smiles brightly at people on trains and experiments with hitchhiking with a friend she’d made at a hostel, and never spends more than a couple days in the same city.

She’s always on the move, which is the way she’s always thought that life should be lived. She discovers, though, Skyping her mum from Romania, that everything has become a blur (she can’t remember what the name of the city in the Ukraine she’d liked best is) and she thinks, fleetingly, that she’d been wrong.

-

Harry squishes her toes in the sand on a beach in Greece and glances over at Niall. She’s lying on a lounge chair, wearing huge Ray-Bans and a bright blue bikini with tiny pink dots, a bright green margarita in her hand. She’s so pale that the sun basically just reflects off all her exposed skin. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Harry says. 

Niall tilts her head toward Harry. “Yeah,” she says. “Is there enough sunscreen on my face, d’you think?”

Harry rolls her eyes, because of course Niall is aborting the emotional talk before it even starts. “You definitely have enough sunscreen.” Niall had been obsessive about it, applying it to nearly every inch of her body exactly half an hour before they planned to go down to the beach, and Harry thinks she might have put three layers on her face. 

“Good,” Niall says. “Now come lay with me and relax. You look like you need it.”

“All I’ve been doing for months is relaxing,” Harry says, but she lays down in the chair next to Niall’s anyway.

“Fine,” Niall says. “But I just got here, and _I_ need to relax. We can talk about your issues later.”

“I don’t--” Harry starts, but then she thinks better of it. “Okay. How are things at home?”

“Zayn and Liam are good,” Niall says. “Their new jobs seem to working out pretty well. My job is as great as ever, I suppose. Oh! Did I tell you that the temp and Dennis are hooking up in the broom closet on the sly?” And then she’s off, rambling about her coworkers and about Zayn and rather a lot more about Liam than Harry would have expected. Harry lies back and listens. Both of them pretend not to notice that Niall doesn’t say anything about Louis at all.

-

The night before Niall’s week long holiday is up they spend bar hopping, looking hot and letting men buy them drinks and flirt with them. Eventually they end up in the hotel bar, and then they decide they’re tired of it and stumble, plastered, back to their room. Niall hangs all over Harry, who isn’t really doing too much better at walking than she is, crooning Taylor Swift into Harry’s ear. Harry giggles and pushes her face away so she can unlock the door. 

Niall collapses backward onto the bed, giggling too now, and then rolls over and starfishes herself. “My bed,” she says. “All mine.”

“I don’t think so,” Harry says, kicking off her shoes and crawling onto the bed, shoving Niall’s limbs out of the way. Niall lets her, but she immediately clings on to Harry. Harry doesn’t mind that. She hadn’t realised until Niall came to visit just how long it had been since someone had touched her properly, let alone cuddled with her, which was just not natural for someone as tactile as Harry.

“Miss you,” Niall murmurs into Harry’s neck.

“I’m right here,” Harry says.

Niall shakes her head minutely. “You know what I mean.”

-

Later, when Harry is all but asleep, Niall says, “I saw that book in your bag.” Harry tenses up. “He misses you, too.”

“I know,” Harry replies eventually. “I read it.”

-

Barely a week after Niall leaves, Harry resigns herself to the fact that she’s done running. There’s nothing out here for her, and it’s no use pretending there is anymore. There’s always been a lingering deadline, really, though she’d preferred not to mention it to anyone or even think about it herself. Life and responsibility await her.

She calls the law school to accept the admission she’d deferred and set up her registration. She checks her bank account and thanks her lucky stars for a supportive stepfather, and then she books one final flight back home. She can drive to school from her parents’ house.

-

“Welcome home,” Robin says once Anne has stopped hugging and fussing over Harry and gone to make some tea. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Harry shrugs, then says, “It wasn’t out there, but I think I needed to go there to realise where it was.”

Robin nods like he understands, and hell, maybe he really does. He puts an arm around her shoulder. “Gemma won’t be off work for another few hours, but she’s coming over for tea, I expect. Why don’t you tell me what kind of little things you found and show me and your mum some pictures?”

“Okay,” Harry agrees, and she lets him guide her into the living room.

-

Harry doesn’t go to see Louis when she gets back to town. She thinks he knows she’s back, at least, figures that one of their mutual friends told him about her plans. but she doesn’t think he needs or wants to see her anymore than she did in April. It’s best if she just lets him be; it was her fault, after all. Her stupid mistake, and she’s still too scared to know what she’d even say to his face.

She goes to Liam’s birthday party, arriving a good half hour before it’s supposed to start. It seems to have been organized completely by Niall and Zayn and takes place in their new flat. She mentions this to Liam after a bit, when more people have showed up and are milling about, and he blinks at her over his beer bottle, biting his lip nervously. 

“What?” she asks.

“I kind of, um,”--his cheeks flush light pink--”I live here?”

“With Niall and Zayn?” Harry asks, and Liam nods. “I thought it was a one bedroom?” He nods again. “Oh,” Harry says, and wonders who Liam became while she was gone and what happened to put that tiny happy smile on his face. 

She thinks Liam might have started to tell her, but halfway through his first sentence Harry spots the edge of Louis, back turned to her, talking to someone Harry doesn’t recognize, and she cuts him off. “Raincheck, Li,” she says. “Time for me to go.”

Liam’s eyebrows furrow, but once he scans the room it smoothes back out. “You’re going to have to eventually,” he says, voice sad and gentle. 

Harry nods. “But it’s not the time nor place right now, I don’t think.” She leans in to hug Liam, stays a little too long breathing in the smell of his aftershave, and presses a kiss to his cheek, whispering a happy birthday into his ear before slipping out of the party. 

Liam’s words stick in her head, though, repeating over and over as the summer draws to an end and she takes a picture of a sunset and does mundane things like grocery shop and consider going to the cinema, only to drive back to her tiny studio flat and sit on the sofa with ice cream instead. _Eventually_ rings in her head when she sits down in the back of her first ever law school class and consequently every time she attends that class again. Her fingers hover over her phone screen too often. Sometimes she even gets as far as typing a text to Louis before she erases it and tweets something inane instead.

Liam comes over and sits on her sofa looking worried. She kind of wishes he’d just leave, and then she makes him tea because she feels bad about thinking that. Next time he brings Niall and Zayn, and that’s way too much for Harry to handle. Even when they’re sitting on opposite sides of the room, they still telegraph how in love they are. Harry wonders if people can feel her and Louis’ feelings, if they knew before either of them did at all, and then she bites her tongue to make herself stop thinking about it. She makes them all tea and then tells them she needs to study before they can finish and start actually talking. It’s true, but Harry still feels terrible when she closes the door behind them. She considers herself lucky that she can still feel anything.

It happens by chance, in the end, which Harry later thinks is rather fitting for them. They never really made any choices, after all, in the grand scheme of things. None of the good choices, anyway. They made lots of bad ones.

Harry is taking a detour so that she can stop at Starbucks on the way back to her flat from the library. It’s getting dark, early October wind cutting through her jumper, and she turns the corner with her cup and nearly walks straight into Louis.

It’s a close thing; Louis nearly ends up wearing Harry’s double shot vanilla latte, but they both jerk to a stop in time. Harry can’t do anything but stand still, gaping at him. He’s looking back, but he looks more puzzled than anything else, like maybe he can’t place her face, even though Harry knows that’s absurd and he’s probably just wondering what she’s doing on this particular street corner. It’s been months since she last saw him, endless months, and he looks like people do in the light of a campfire--burning orange and bright in a sea of darkness, features blurred into nothing with the brilliance of them. 

“Louis,” she says after millennia have passed. 

“Hey, Harry,” he replies, and god, his voice. Harry can’t ever remember hearing it sound like that. Was it always so deep and rasping? “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” Harry says. “Good. Great. What about you?”

“The same.” Louis shifts back on his heels. “I heard you’re in law school?”

“Yeah.” She gestures to her bag like Louis can see through the canvas and read the spines of her textbooks. “What are you…?” She trails off, unsure.

“Done school now. Still working at the restaurant, but I’m working on some writing as well. I just like having somewhere to go, people to talk to every day.” He presses his lips together like maybe they’ve betrayed him.

Harry nods. She doesn’t want the conversation to end, but she has no idea how to keep Louis here, on a street corner while it gets darker every second. He probably wishes he’d taken a different route. Harry could never wish that, at least not with Louis standing right in front of her.

“Quite cold, innit?” Louis says. “Was popping over to Starbucks as well, actually.” He nods toward the cup in Harry’s hand. “I’d best go.”

He starts to walk away. Panic swells up between Harry’s bones. This can’t be it; they can’t be reduced to mere acquaintances who make small talk when they see each other and then carry on with their lives like nothing happened. She reaches out before she can think better of it and grabs Louis’ wrist, tugging him back. 

“No, stop, I love you,” she says, and everything comes screeching to a halt around her.

Louis has stopped walking away. Harry is so glad about this that she almost forgets what she said. Louis tries to tug his wrist away, though, and Harry remembers. She doesn’t let go, though, can’t remember how to move her fingers, and Louis doesn’t keep trying. 

“Why would you say that?” he says. “Why would--when you know--” his voice cracks, and Harry thinks she might be, too.

“Because I do. I love you, and it’s not like before, when I said I loved you, because now I mean it,” she says. “I mean, I meant it then, but-- fuck.” God, she needs to get this right. He needs to at least understand. She’s rubbing the skin of Louis’ wrist with her thumb, she realises, and Louis is staring at their hands, and he’s still not trying to pull away again. “I ran away,” Harry says. “And it was the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done.”

“Running away?” Louis repeats, sounding lost.

“Leaving you,” Harry amends firmly, and Louis looks her in the eye. Fuck, she hadn’t realised he’d been avoiding it completely until he stopped. 

“You love me?” Louis asks tentatively. Harry nods. “I--”

“I know,” Harry interrupts.

“I love you too,” Louis says anyway. He pulls his wrist gently out of Harry’s grip so he can tangle their fingers together. Harry holds on tight, and when she looks up, Louis is smiling, small and hopeful and so, so wonderful.

She smiles back.

 

THE END


End file.
